Alfred Bäumler
“A clear idea of the development of feeling and thought in the period from about 1670 to 1830 is not only a demand rising from the current state of research in the humanities, but also a need that is vividly felt in the life of the individual. It is the epoch from which the greater part of our education originates [but] young people are turning away from it as a whole. They prefer to seek their leaders in Russia rather than Königsberg and Weimar; the precious possession of German idealism is in danger of becoming a more or less reverently regarded inventory piece of a bygone (“bourgeois”) epoch. In this situation, we only have the choice of either reacquiring the content of humanity contained in this legacy of German education or perhaps losing it forever.” (From the preface.)